Pentagon Wants Troop Poop Porta-Reactors

The Pentagon’s got a new idea for generating renewable power at overseas military bases, and it’s an eco-friendly initiative inspired by one of nature’s most irrefutable truths: everyone poops.

It’s no surprise that Darpa, the military’s risk-taking research agency, is behind this one. They’re requesting information on approaches to developing portable nuclear reactors that could generate electricity and fuel for land and water-based operations. And they want the systems to be sustainable for “several years” in off-the-grid locales. That means “indigenous feedstocks” are the preferred fuel source. What could be more indigenous, Darpa asks, than human waste?

The military’s already working on using seawater to create fuel, but that’s more of an option for maritime operations. Without an endless supply of seawater, they’d need an alternative carbon source. Enter the massive quantities of sludge that inevitably accumulate around troop outposts. It’s been a problem for decades, according to environmental management expert Dr. James Lee. In an article for the Army’s Engineer School, he writes that the military spent upwards of $65,000 in annual fuel costs just to burn off human refuse at base camp in the Balkans.

So Darpa’s proposal would offer two major benefits: Less waste to treat and dispose of at bases, and fewer financial and tactical burdens around sourcing adequate fuel — whether to power jets and facilities or burn off heaps of odorous fecal matter. And with a single trooper stationed in Afghanistan using 22 gallons of fuel a day, that’d add up to major savings.

Proposals reactors should offer a method of yielding 15,000 gallons of road fuel a day from an easy-to-deploy device. And please, keep the radioactive fudge to a minimum. The agency also expects proposers to come up with generators that “do not produce waste products which would contribute to proliferation problems.”